This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.

The Amazon's Most Feared Fish: The Candiru is a terrifying fish, even when stacked up against its fellow river monsters of the Amazon. But this parasitic freshwater catfish does not instill fear by way of its monstrous size. On the contrary, it's small, eel-like and so translucent that it can be nearly impossible to spot in the water, which makes it even more terrifying. Some claim this fish is the most feared in the entire Amazon region, and the fear stems from the fact that it has a knack for finding open orifices and working its way inside. Once inside another organism, the Candiru feeds on its host's blood, becoming increasingly swollen. The Candiru is the star of an urban legend — which turns out to be true — of a man who was urinating in the Amazon River when a 6-inch Candiru swam up his urine stream into his penis. The fish remained there for days, until a surgeon was able to remove it.

Egyptian Teenager Invents New Space Propulsion System Based On Quantum Physics

Precocious young physicist Aisha Mustafa just patented a new system that could propel spacecrafts to the final frontier without using a drop of fuel.
In short her system taps one of the odder facets of quantum theory, which posits that space isn't really a vacuum. It's really filled with particles and anti-particles that exist for infinitesimally small periods of time before destroying each other. Mustafa thinks she can harness them to create propulsion, resulting in space craft that need little-to-no fuel to maneuver around in space. Fast Company reports:

Mustafa invented a way of tapping this quantum effect via what's known as the dynamic Casimir effect. This uses a "moving mirror" cavity, where two very reflective very flat plates are held close together, and then moved slightly to interact with the quantum particle sea. It's horribly technical, but the end result is that Mustafa's use of shaped silicon plates similar to those used in solar power cells results in a net force being delivered. A force, of course, means a push or a pull and in space this equates to a drive or engine.

Propulsion in space is incredibly easy to achieve because there aren't any particles to get in the way, but until now we've been completely reliant on engines to do the work. Engines create propulsion by burning chemical fuels—these fuels are heavy and expensive, making some of the crazy exploration we'd like to do impossible. Mustafa's system could let the laws physics do the heavy-lifting instead.

Of course, Mustafa needs to work on the design much more and figure out how to get funding for the ambitious adventure. We hope some organization with deep pockets steps up because the science is remarkable.

Egyptian Teenager Invents New Space Propulsion System Based On Quantum Physics

Precocious young physicist Aisha Mustafa just patented a new system that could propel spacecrafts to the final frontier without using a drop of fuel.
In short her system taps one of the odder facets of quantum theory, which posits that space isn't really a vacuum. It's really filled with particles and anti-particles that exist for infinitesimally small periods of time before destroying each other. Mustafa thinks she can harness them to create propulsion, resulting in space craft that need little-to-no fuel to maneuver around in space. Fast Company reports:

Mustafa invented a way of tapping this quantum effect via what's known as the dynamic Casimir effect. This uses a "moving mirror" cavity, where two very reflective very flat plates are held close together, and then moved slightly to interact with the quantum particle sea. It's horribly technical, but the end result is that Mustafa's use of shaped silicon plates similar to those used in solar power cells results in a net force being delivered. A force, of course, means a push or a pull and in space this equates to a drive or engine.

Propulsion in space is incredibly easy to achieve because there aren't any particles to get in the way, but until now we've been completely reliant on engines to do the work. Engines create propulsion by burning chemical fuels—these fuels are heavy and expensive, making some of the crazy exploration we'd like to do impossible. Mustafa's system could let the laws physics do the heavy-lifting instead.

Of course, Mustafa needs to work on the design much more and figure out how to get funding for the ambitious adventure. We hope some organization with deep pockets steps up because the science is remarkable.

If this has any legitimate scientific basis, then I see no reason why the US shouldn't detain this young man for an indeterminate period of time.

Egyptian Teenager Invents New Space Propulsion System Based On Quantum Physics

Precocious young physicist Aisha Mustafa just patented a new system that could propel spacecrafts to the final frontier without using a drop of fuel.
In short her system taps one of the odder facets of quantum theory, which posits that space isn't really a vacuum. It's really filled with particles and anti-particles that exist for infinitesimally small periods of time before destroying each other. Mustafa thinks she can harness them to create propulsion, resulting in space craft that need little-to-no fuel to maneuver around in space. Fast Company reports:

Mustafa invented a way of tapping this quantum effect via what's known as the dynamic Casimir effect. This uses a "moving mirror" cavity, where two very reflective very flat plates are held close together, and then moved slightly to interact with the quantum particle sea. It's horribly technical, but the end result is that Mustafa's use of shaped silicon plates similar to those used in solar power cells results in a net force being delivered. A force, of course, means a push or a pull and in space this equates to a drive or engine.

Propulsion in space is incredibly easy to achieve because there aren't any particles to get in the way, but until now we've been completely reliant on engines to do the work. Engines create propulsion by burning chemical fuels—these fuels are heavy and expensive, making some of the crazy exploration we'd like to do impossible. Mustafa's system could let the laws physics do the heavy-lifting instead.

Of course, Mustafa needs to work on the design much more and figure out how to get funding for the ambitious adventure. We hope some organization with deep pockets steps up because the science is remarkable.

I've heard of S.Q.U.I.D. propulsion systems before. Sounds awesome. But I thought they were really inefficient, and the output wasn't enough to be considered worthwhile.

Regardless, I can't imagine being a teenager, and coming up with shit like this.

Back in college, I was in an Engineering club(yeah.. I know..). We had a guest speaker come one time and explain his idea for a "warp drive", based on the Alcubierre drive. It melted my brain at the time....

Physicists outline how to manipulate the fabric of space to accelerate a craft faster than the speed of light -- in theory, anyway.

It is possible to travel faster than light. You just wouldn't travel faster than light.

Seems strange, but by manipulating extra dimensions with astronomical amounts of energy, two Baylor University physicists have outlined how a faster-than-light engine, or warp drive, could be created that would bend but not break the laws of physics.

"We think we can create an effective warp drive, based on general relatively and string theory," said Gerald Cleaver, coauthor of the paper that recently appeared on the preprint server ArXiv.org

The warp engine is based on a design first proposed in 1994 by Michael Alcubierre. The Alcubierre drive, as it's known, involves expanding the fabric of space behind a ship into a bubble and shrinking space-time in front of the ship. The ship would rest in between the expanding and shrinking space-time, essentially surfing down the side of the bubble.

The tricky part is that the ship wouldn't actually move; space itself would move underneath the stationary spacecraft. A beam of light next to the ship would still zoom away, same as it always does, but a beam of light far from the ship would be left behind.

That means that the ship would arrive at its destination faster than a beam of light traveling the same distance, but without violating Einstein's relativity, which says that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light, since the ship itself isn't actually moving.

The fabric of space has moved faster than light before, says Cleaver, right after the Big Bang, when the universe expanded faster than the speed of light.

"We're recreating the inflationary period of the universe behind the ship," said Cleaver.

While the theory rests on relatively firm ground, the next question is how do you expand space behind the ship and contract it in front of the ship?

Cleaver and Richard Obousy, the other coauthor, propose manipulating the 11th dimension, a special theoretical construct of m-theory (the offspring of string theory), to create the bubble the ship would surf down.

If the 11th dimension could be shrunk behind the ship it would create a bubble of dark energy, the same dark energy that is causing the universe to speed up as time goes on. Expanding the 11th dimension in front of the ship would eventually cause it to decrease, although two separate steps are required.

Exactly how the 11th dimension would be expanded and shrunk is still unknown.

"These calculations are based on some arbitrary advance in technology or some alien technology that would let us manipulate the extra dimension," said Cleaver.

What the scientists were able to estimate was the amount of energy necessary, if the technology was available, to change these dimensions: about 10^45 joules.

"That's about the amount of energy you'd get if you converted the entire mass of Jupiter into pure energy via E = mc^2," said Cleaver, an energy far beyond anything humanity can currently envision creating.

While the challenges to creating a warp drive are quite formidable, the concept is intriguing, says Tufts University theoretical physicist Lawrence Ford.

"If there are extra dimensions and we could manipulate them, that would open up all sorts of exciting possibilities," said Ford.

"I don't see this leading immediately to a warp drive, but I could see it leading to other interesting possibilities in basic scientific research," said Ford.

Cleaver agrees that the creation of a real warp drive is still far away.

"Warp drive isn't doable now, and probably won't be for the next several millenia," said Cleaver.

In a few hours, we'll be treated to a once in a lifetime transit of Venus passing in front of the sun.

Because Venus and the earth don't orbit the sun on the exact same plane--Venus' orbit is tipped 3.4 degrees relative to ours--most of the time it's too high or too low...It only lines up in all 3 dimensions and traverses across the sun four times during an unusual 243 year cycle, with the transits coming in pairs separated by alternating periods of 121.5 and 105.5 years.

In the United States, the transit will begin at roughly 6:04 Eastern, 5:04 Central, 4:05 Mountain, and 3:06 Pacific Time. Over the course of several hours, Venus will appear as a small dot moving slowly against backdrop of the sun.

The next few transits will be in December 2117, December 2125, June 2247 and June 2255.